The following description relates to providing access to online marketplace services, for example, to allow sellers of property or merchandise to sell goods or items through an online auction. An online marketplace is one that may be accessed via one or more web sites through which people and organizations from around the world can buy and sell goods and services. Among other goods and services, items such as collectibles, books, jewelry, appliances, computers, tickets, sporting goods, furniture, equipment, vehicles, and vacation packages may be listed, bought and/or sold on online marketplace web sites.
Participants in online marketplaces may include individuals, small companies, large corporations, or other types of organizations. In general, the term “organization” may refer to a company, enterprise, business, government, educational institution, or the like. The term “organization” can also refer to a group of persons, such as an association or society.
Some participants in online marketplaces may have business-to-business (B2B) relationships with other participants that may tend to focus on a vertical market, such as healthcare or automotive. Participants in a B2B auction can liquidate unwanted capital assets, dispose of excess inventory, and buy or sell equipment, goods, and services. Other participants in an online marketplace may have a business-to-customer (B2C) relationship, in which a business may sell goods and services to the consumer market
In one example of an online marketplace, EBAY Inc. of San Jose, Calif. provides online services in which buyers and sellers can list, browse, buy and/or sell various goods and services in a web-based marketplace. Among other services, EBAY facilitates online auctions in which EBAY typically does not directly handle or own the goods. Instead, EBAY can facilitate the listing of the goods and services, like want-ads in a newspaper, and facilitate transactions of buying and selling activities between buyers and sellers. Among other operations, EBAY can provide listing features beyond what can be offered in a newspaper, such as a dynamic pricing structure.
Instead of, or in addition to, online auctions, an online marketplace may provide a fixed-priced format for selling goods and services. For example, the online marketplaces of EBAY, AMAZON.COM, Inc. of Seattle Wash. and BUY.COM, Inc. of Aliso Viejo, Calif. provide fixed-priced selling, in which the seller offers goods at a fixed, predetermined price. The price of the good may be a factor of the Manufacturer's Suggested Retail Price (MSRP), and/or the price of the same good from other sellers.
An online marketplace represents a sales channel—that is, an avenue for selling goods or services—that has become popular only recently. More traditional sales channels include “brick-and-mortar” storefronts, for example, a department store in which a good (e.g., a shirt) can be sold to buyers of the good. Other sales channels include catalog sales, door-to-door sales, and telemarketing sales. A seller may use multiple sales channels to sell its goods or services—e.g., retail stores and an online sale channel such as a web site with similar product offerings. In the case of an online sales channel, a seller may either set-up and maintain its own dedicated web-site that sells only its own merchandise or the seller may use an online marketplace web-site (e.g. EBAY, AMAZON.COM or BUY.COM) that sells merchandise owned by several different sellers. As used herein, “online sales channel” encompasses both dedicated, single-seller online sales channels as well as multiple-seller online sales channels.